No one uses Rorschach anymore

With all the rainy weather keeping me from working outside one might have expected I'd pay greater attention to this blogsite. No excuses. I just haven't felt the urge to share. I am back at work three days a week counseling high school kids--most girls (guys just don't want to talk about their feelings) who challenge me constantly, balking at my attempots to structure them into small groups dealing with self-esteem, family issues (of which there is no shortage),coping with stress and depression, and anger management. I am swamped with referrals of girls wanting to talk but sometimes overwhelmned by too much estrogen being dumped on me. However, I still enjoy working with these kids.

Speaking of rainy weather, I can appreciate the close interface between rain and depression. Both Lena Horne and Billy Holiday made hit recordings of the song Stormy Weather.

"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky,
Stormy waether since my man and I ain't together,
Keeps raining all the time."

When I was a psychology intern at the V.A. Hospital at Perry Point, Maryland I was supervised by a psychoanalyst from Baltimore. I was doing therapy with a nurse with a diagnosis of Manic Depression (now Bi-polar Disorder). While she was in her manic phase she provided me with a rich source of juicy material for my mentor to interpret. I had to present the case weekly to a large group of psychologists and psychiatrists. One day she stopped talking as she passed in the depressive phase of her desorder. I became concerned that I would have nothing to present at our next supervision meeting.

"She stopped talking, doctor."
"She said nothing at all?"
"Only one sentence the entire hour. She said, It's raining out."

He quoted for me a poem I had learned in high school French class.

"Il pleur dans mon coeur comme il pleur sur la vie."

Translation: It rains in my heart like it rains on the city."

"Your patient is depressed," he interpreted, somewhat pompously.

(Brilliant.)

"I know she is depressed, doctor, and it was raining out at the time. What
do I do now?"

He chose someone else to present for the following week.

I did get a great deal of practice and supervision in administering Rorschach tests at Perry Point and later taught Rorschach interpretation to pschology graduate students at Brym Mawr College. Yet Rorschach is pretty much passe' today with more emphasis placed on more objective assessment instruments.

The Director of Pupil Services at school, who also had some training in projective techniques, asked me yestereday to use the Rorschach in a risk assessment with a new student who had a violent rage reaction towards his mother. Is this Intermittent Explosive Disorder?" Does he represent a continued danger at school? Rorschach testing might provcide some clues as to the intensity of his anger and potential for aggression at school. In Rorschach interpretation the use of color in forming percepts from the relatively ambiguous inkblots is equated with emotional lability. The perception of movement in the inkblots and the frequency of "good form" responses is considered a measure of emotional control. I'll do the testing next week and we'll see.










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